Why We Prepare Teens for College But Not For Life: Practical Tips for Parents
Last August, I helped my 19-year-old niece move into her sophomore year dorm. The hallway reeked of microwave popcorn and brand-new shower caddies, my shirt was soaked through from carrying her mini-fridge up three flights of stairs, and she was standing in the middle of the room, staring at her phone like it had grown a second head. Her debit card was locked after a $24 overdraft, and she couldn’t figure out how to unlock it. When I asked her why she just didn’t call customer service, she blinked and said, “I don’t know what to say. I hate talking on the phone to strangers. Can you just do it?”
I did it, of course. While I waited on hold, I went through the last four years of her high school life in my head. Every after-school activity was picked because it looked good on college applications. Her mom met with the counselor every three months to map out her AP classes. She edited the college essay three times, filled out the FAFSA, and drove her to every campus tour. She got into her top-choice school, and we all threw her a big party with a cake that said “CONGRATS GRAD.” No one ever talked about how to talk to a customer service rep, or how to dispute an overdraft fee, or how to do anything that doesn’t involve texting or liking a post.
I have a 17-year-old son, and I realized I’ve done the same thing, more or less. For most of his high school career, my main focus was making sure he had the grades, the volunteer hours, the test scores to get into a program he likes. The life stuff? It got pushed to the side. When he needed to reschedule a doctor’s appointment, I did it. When he had a dispute with his boss at the grocery store about a missed shift, I almost stepped in to fix it. It wasn’t that I thought he couldn’t do it – it was just faster if I did it, and we were all already stretched so thin with homework and soccer practice and college prep stuff.
After the niece move-in, I started making small changes. Nothing big, no 10-step life skills bootcamp. The first thing I did was stop making his phone calls and sending his emails for him. If he has a question about a grade on a test, he has to email the teacher himself. I’ll help him draft it if he asks, but he hits send. If he needs to reschedule his haircut or book his SAT, he does it. Last spring, he forgot to book his driver’s road test, even after I reminded him three times. I didn’t call the DMV to beg for a last-minute slot. He had to wait six weeks for the next opening, and he had to bike 20 minutes round-trip to his after-school job every day through the April rain. He was mad at me for a week, but now he sets three calendar reminders for every appointment he has. That’s a lesson I never could have taught him with a lecture.
Another thing I do: once a month, he has to plan, shop for, and cook three dinners for our family on a $50 budget. He complains about it, sure, but he’s learned how to compare prices, adjust a recipe if the store doesn’t have an ingredient, and clean up a whole kitchen after cooking. Last month he made pasta that was way too salty, but we ate it anyway, and he adjusted the salt the next time. That’s fine. Low-stakes mistakes at home are way better than high-stakes mistakes when he’s paying rent on his own.
I don’t mean this to sound like I’m against college prep. Getting into a good school that fits your kid is a great thing. But we’ve collectively decided that getting into college is the finish line, and it’s not. It’s just a stop along the way. I’ve talked to so many college advisors who say the biggest problem they see with freshmen isn’t academic – it’s life skills. Kids who can’t do their own laundry, who can’t schedule their own doctor’s appointments, who call their parents at 2 a.m. to fix a conflict with their roommate because they don’t know how to talk it out themselves.
The practical stuff doesn’t take a lot of extra time, really. You don’t have to add another thing to your already full plate. You just have to shift who does the work. If your kid breaks a neighbor’s window with their baseball, don’t write the check and apologize for them. Send them over to the neighbor’s house with you standing behind them, and let them talk. If they want a new phone, let them research the plans and call the provider to switch it. It takes them longer, it’s messy, and sometimes they mess it up. That’s the point.
Last week, my son spilled a full iced coffee all over his laptop two hours before a big research paper was due. I grabbed the paper towels, and my first instinct was to call the school’s IT department myself, to explain the situation and beg for a rush fix. But I stopped, and I handed him the phone number. He called, explained what happened, they had him drop it off, and he got it back an hour later with all his files intact. When he came home, he mentioned casually that he was glad he did it himself, because he knows what to do if it happens again when he’s at college.
We still haven’t gotten around to changing a tire together. He still can’t iron a shirt properly, and he still asks me to call the cable company when our internet goes out sometimes. We’re not doing this perfectly. There’s no perfect way to prepare a kid for every possible thing life will throw at them. But we can stop acting like the goal is just to get them into college. The goal is to get them to adulthood knowing they can handle the small, messy, boring problems that come up every single day. That’s the part we’re missing right now, and it’s the part that matters most in the end.
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